Angry New Yorker

Semi-Daily Rants from New York City's Angry Man

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly." - Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, Sept. 1783

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
 
The Summer 2006 City Journal issue is out.

City Journal Summer 2006. Summer 2006.

A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Myron Magnet.

Why Today’s Immigrants Don’t Flourish

Steven Malanga
How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy
A handful of industries get low-cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill.

Heather Mac Donald
Seeing Today’s Immigrants Straight
Advocates of “comprehensive immigration reform” let ideology blind them to the dispiriting facts on the ground.

Sol Stern
The Ed Schools’ Latest—and Worst—Humbug
Teaching for “social justice” is a cruel hoax on disadvantaged kids.

Gerry Garibaldi
How the Schools Shortchange Boys
In the newly feminized classroom, boys tune out.

Nicole Gelinas
Is There a New York Housing Crisis?
Only when government creates one—as Mayor Bloomberg is doing now.

Heather Mac Donald
New York Cops: Still the Finest
Bucking a national trend, Gotham’s crime rate keeps dropping. Here’s why.

Urbanities

Kay S. Hymowitz
Desperate Grandmas
Now sexagenarians, narcissistic feminists are still seeking the Best Sex Ever.

Theodore Dalrymple
The Terrorists Among Us
It’s not just Islam, but the tension between Islam and Western modernity, that makes them tick.

Steven Malanga
The Last Full Measure
Gotham may not know how to honor the 9/11 dead, but the suburbs do.

Departments

In Prospect

Soundings
Crime Capital
Reorganizing the Reorganization
Fixing the CDBG
Soccer Louts
Crime and Indulgence
Stop Storm Dallying
Blame Israel Always

Theodore Dalrymple
Oh, to be in England
Real Crime, Fake Justice

Letters

Contributors

Edmund Janko
Dean’s Office Diarist
It Still Leaves a Bad Taste


posted by anonymous at 9:46 PM

 
Level Lebanon if Necessary

The middle-east is a land of constant tears, thanks to human failings. And while we pray for the safety of truly innocent civilians, if need be the Israeli army should level every manmade structure in Lebanon to root out Hizbullah once and for all and let the empty wasteland stand as a example to all with the Lebanese people wandering the earth like modern-day Ancient Mariners telling their sad tales to any party-gather who will listen.

posted by anonymous at 6:48 PM

Monday, July 03, 2006
 
Our big "three h's" speech gains more background each week it seems. Oneof these days we'll get around to posting it up here, but until then, this tidbit in the history and human nature columns, (hat tip to Instapundit):
IN THE ASIA TIMES, a look at primitive authenticity:

Two billion war deaths would have occurred in the 20th century if modern societies suffered the same casualty rate as primitive peoples, according to anthropologist Lawrence H Keeley, who calculates that two-thirds of them were at war continuously, typically losing half of a percent of its population to war each year.

This and other noteworthy prehistoric factoids can be found in Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn, a survey of genetic, linguistic and archeological research on early man. Primitive peoples, it appears, were nasty, brutish, and short, not at all the cuddly children of nature depicted by popular culture and post-colonial academic studies. The author writes on science for the New York
Times and too often wades in where angels fear to tread. [3] A complete evaluation is beyond my capacity, but there is no gainsaying his representation of prehistoric violence.

That raises the question: Why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, does popular culture portray primitives as peace-loving folk living in harmony with nature, as opposed to rapacious and brutal civilization?

I think it has something to do with the new misanthropy, and with the same kind of voyeuristic idealization that led Marie Antoinette to play peasant.


posted by anonymous at 11:26 AM

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